


Chasing Ruins

by cristianoronaldo



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1860084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cristianoronaldo/pseuds/cristianoronaldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hookup in Rome. Cesc/David but not a love story in any sense of the word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: Cesc is super drunk, David is not. I marked it graphic depiction of violence just for a few lines in case that bothers anyone. Comment if I should be more specific with the warnings. Please let me know!

He was pressed against a dirty wall in Rome with his shirt unbuttoned. Lower lip bloody, knees bruised, he had those pathetic puppy dog eyes that begged for the kind of filthy alleyway they had found.

 

“What’s your name again?” He said, bringing his head back from the other man, knocking it slightly against the stone wall behind him.

 

The older man smiled down at him. Amused and vaguely charmed, he put his hand behind Cesc’s head to prevent further damage. “David.”

 

He went back to kissing Cesc’s neck. Delirious in his drunken stupor, Cesc leaned his head back and shut his eyes. “You taste like cigarettes. Do you know my name?”

 

“Cesc,” David answered, biting the other man’s lip. “Do you want to come back to my apartment?” Swift, natural, routine.

 

“Sure,” he said easily, and he began to follow, but then common sense stabbed its way through his drunken shield of stupidity, and he pulled back on David’s arm, gripping the stone wall beside him for support. He stumbled, threw his arms out to regain balance, and toppled clumsily into a stationary white Vespa.

 

“Wait,” he said slowly, the vodka inflicting another painful dose of insistence to speak.

 

The age of pre-alcoholic thought tickled at the back of his mind and possible scenarios began to filter through: an image of himself splayed on his back, first getting fucked violently into a thin mattress, and then a second image, again splayed on his back but this time with his stomach ripped open, blood dripping down his horrified frozen features and soaking into the mattress beneath him. Most terrifyingly were his wrists bent in ways they never should have moved, veins hanging loose like limp wires made of overcooked spaghetti.

 

He pointed a shaking accusatory finger at the man whose name he had once again forgotten. He snapped twice, preparing to magically conjure the tricky name his tongue stumbled over.

 

“Daniel,” he said solidly, “I don’t want you to murder me when we get back there because I’ve always been taught not to go home with strangers.”

 

Amused again, David moved forward to button Cesc’s shirt which had fallen open to reveal his chest, a single scar, a necklace too delicate for his sculpted body.

 

“And have you ever listened?”

 

Confident, alluring, and handsome, he possessed all the gifts necessary for a predator in the night but not a single one registered with Cesc whose desperation formed a second shield, this one impossible to penetrate. David had him right where he wanted him but not because of the talents he normally relied on.

 

David extended his hand. He had this unique smile that narrowed his eyes. As they narrowed, the color vanished almost entirely, and they turned into two dark, shining slits with rays of smile lines extending from the corner of either eye and fading out close to his hairline.

 

Cesc stared back unsteadily. The smile was the first thing to rest its grimy, selfish fingers on Cesc and attempt to pry his careless nature away. He let David hold his hand, and he followed him down the road with no intention of anything. His mind was blank as a sheet of paper but he was flying just walking, weightless and confident because even when he tripped over the rough, black cobblestones, he could look up and laugh and smile and attract attention with his beauty, because his drunk self was beautiful, beautiful in ways a sober, mentally stable person could never be. Instability in its finest form was the most attractive quality about Cesc, and he could only access that unfiltered beauty after too many drinks and too little preparation for a drunken night full of groping, French kissing, and the sickly sweet smell of a man pressed up against him.

 

They passed a fountain, a couple kissing at the base of it. The wind was catching her hair, her blue dress, the ribbon threaded through her loose fingers. She murmured something about going home, lips wet and full against the man's, and Cesc groaned loudly, leaning leisurely into David's side. David pulled him closer, and Cesc didn't look at his face-- didn't care about his looks, only about his lips, would have shut his eyes if David put a finger beneath his chin and made him look at those narrow, dark eyes again.

 

"I have to--" He pulled on David's arm. "The pantheon. Take me there. My apartment is a block away."

 

"I thought we were going to mine." He was frowning but thankfully looking around the piazza to get his bearings and reorient them. "But if you prefer yours..."

 

Cesc tripped happily along, pulling David over every few feet and kissing the absolute life out of him. David tasted like cigarettes and too many nights with the same script; Cesc, like beer and mint and little experience. Like youth and natural talent and too many nights with the same reckless streak cutting him open like a lamb freshly slaughtered.

 

"I have a roommate," he said, sighing obnoxiously. "You can't come up there and besides you said you didn't have a condom."

 

"I never said that," David said, perfectly sober-- disgustingly sober and alert while Cesc was sloppy and clumsy but shining with that drunken confidence that transformed him into a shining jewel in David's eyes. "But you're right that I don't."

 

"Honestly," Cesc said, blowing air out loudly from his lips, "Why are you going out if you don't have one? What do you think we're going to do-- make some fucking friendship bracelets? Idiot."

 

David laughed pleasantly. He was content to just make out with Cesc in a dark alleyway, maybe get a handjob out of it and certainly give one, and the adventure of finding the Pantheon in the dark, sitting with Cesc on the stone beside it, dirtying his hands with the younger man and with the filth that covered every inch of Rome-- that was worth it, for the rush of adrenaline and for the feeling of being alive in the middle of the night when others had their eyes sewn shut by the darkness and their weary souls.

 

"Where are we going?" Cesc asked a few blocks later, his eyes wide open and curious and vaguely calling back to himself-- the Pantheon, my apartment-- but the realization didnt hit him in time and instead, before he could have his answer, he pulled David down to quite thoroughly devour.

 

"Pantheon," David said against his mouth. "But I can't walk straight when you kiss." His English was affected but quite good. "When you pull me." He gestured with his arms to show the crooked path they had been taking while kissing.

 

"Sorry," Cesc said without remorse, walking on.

 

When they reached it, they rested against the stone barrier on the side of the piazza, but Cesc hung back, not daring to peek over. Someone up ahead was walking along the stone, staring down at the ruins dozens of feet below, and David shook his head and spoke in rapid Italian. Cesc studied the language, didnt catch a single word.

 

"Sit here." David patted the place beside him.

 

"No," Cesc replied, pulling away. "Scared," he said, "of heights. Don't like them."  David didnt understand, and Cesc couldn't remember the word for fear, but in the morning he would be waking up with the cold taste of paura on his lips. "And I should be getting home. My roommate."

 

"You have roommate?"

 

"Yes." Guilt building in his chest. Regardless of whether It was the late hour or the overwhelming carelessness or the vodka, beer, and gin combination, Cesc was beginning to lean more and more heavily into David and he was tired right down to his bones. He wasnt enjoying the kisses anymore but he kept giving them, and a fine layer of the taste of cigarette was developing on his tongue.

 

They kept walking, kissing, searching for a second dark alleyway, and finally David pulled Cesc into a narrow street with parked cars and vespas, pushed Cesc up against the red car with a dent in the side, and slid him up until his feet left the ground. He was sitting with his legs spread, David squeezed between them, and when David kissed his neck again, he slammed his eyes shut and fell limp. Couldn't open his eyes for a minute and then David was shaking him, and Cesc had a sliver of hopelessness. That feeling in the pit of his stomach that made him want to let his eyes close and never open again.

 

"What are you doing? Are you going to sleep?"

 

"Tired," Cesc mumbled, and he was reminded of how much he drank by a painful lurch in his stomach. "Might go to sleep right here."

 

"No," David said gently. His tone fooled Cesc, and he reopened his eyes at the kindness.

 

"Okay," he said, and he let himself be taken by the powerful kiss once more.

 

Then David's hands were everywhere and before he knew it, his belt was being undone and David's hands were stroking him, not gently like his tone had promised. He was hurried and strong and all too willing to prove his strength and frenzy with every movement of his hand.

 

Cesc leant forward, vulgarly licked up his chest, grinned, and bent to open David's jeans. Already half open and fully hard, and then Cesc felt like getting sick again, but the image of his hand and another man's body connecting made his mind go blank again, and he was like Rome before the Fall.

 

David's pants were slipping down, and Cesc's were low enough to reveal his black briefs and skinny pale legs, and then Cesc's hands and legs were wet and someone was walking down the alleyway, and David was pulling up his pants with a murmured swear word and a tug on his zipper. He quickly redressed an exhausted and immobile Cesc and, grabbing his hand, led the way as they darted to another dark, secluded place in the shadows of the Roman ruins.

 

"Home," Cesc groaned mournfully, hardly glancing at the perfect circle that towered over him, and he began to lead the way, pulling David along behind him with a flick of his bony wrist.

 

"And we go up," David said, moving his fingers up and down to mimic climbing stairs.

 

Cesc ignored him, growing weary of his presence, and turned down his street--at least what he thought was his street. He peered at the unfamiliar doorways with half-moon eyes, slowly working them through his memory until a green door leapt into his frame of consciousness, and he pulled out his key.

 

They stood in the hallway downstairs for a long time groping in the dark, and for that eternity, all Cesc could hear was David panting in his ear, a belt buckle. All he could feel was smooth, wet against his hand, and the hard wall against his back. The smell was cigarettes and the remnants of dusty construction work finished just days earlier. He stumbled, caught himself on the light, and the spell was broken.

 

"Get out," he said grinning, and David snuck out the door with Cesc's number in his phone though neither of them had any intention of keeping in contact.

 

The next morning was full of headaches and popping pills to make them stop. Coffee and a pile of sugar to make his third espresso go down easier. He smelled of cigarettes, tasted of David and the dried blood he licked off his lips.

 

He arrived at the train station with a backpack, a water bottle, and his sunglasses. Boarded the train and left the satisfying filth of Rome behind.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on real events.   
> I'm finally back from Italy and I have a few things to post before I'm mentally ready to return to Helpless.


End file.
